Passim
by pedomellonaminno
Summary: You meet all sorts of impossible folk when shopping.


Even Donna was a bit unsure as to how she had actually convinced the Doctor to take her shopping, but she figured it was partly guilt over the fact that she'd recently been covered nearly head to toe in mud- and not the nice spa kind, but rather the silty, smelly, alien kind that had been downright nasty. Also, in trying to avoid the slap she'd given him, the Doctor had accidentally pushed some extra buttons on the console and the planet they'd ended up on (after she'd had a shower) had a neat little shopping centre around the corner from where the Tardis had landed. So, regardless of how the circumstances had come about, Donna Noble wandered happily through shop after shop, the Doctor trailing behind her, grumbling much like a younger brother or bored toddler might. But Donna was having fun anyway, as she could spend as much money as she liked, and she'd found an adorable little hat shop, quite uncreatively called The Hat Shop, but what the title lacked in creativity, the hats themselves more than made up for it.

They had left the hat shop almost an hour ago, and were entering the last shop that had caught Donna's eye, a department store that that was larger than the other shops, and didn't quite fit in with the rest of the places they'd already been. Of course, she'd mostly wanted to go in because of that slightly-off feeling, which probably meant it was a marketing strategy- and an effective one, at that. The Doctor fell silent after they walked in, and as much of a relief it was to not have to hear all about the history of a planet they weren't on and would never be, as it was fatal to all carbon-based life forms, apparently, it was so out of character, that after a few minutes, Donna whirled around to face him.

"Okay, Spaceman, what's wrong? You haven't been this quiet this long since you tried the jam on Pex and it glued your mouth shut,"

"Firstly, Donna, the jam on Pex reacted quite fiercely with the chemical make-up of my saliva and formed a nearly solidified thixotropic solution, not glue, and secondly, there is something very, very wrong in here, and I can't tell what, or why, or how. Can't you see it?"

"It's why I came in here. 'Course, I thought it was slightly wrong so it would stand out and people would come in,"

"Of course you noticed and of course you waltzed right in anyway," the Doctor said, rolling his eyes. "I didn't mean it's a little bit wrong in that they sell an abnormal amount of pears- which they do, by the way- I mean it's very, extremely wrong in that there are isles that are supposed to be there but aren't, and the fact that the front door seems to have disappeared."

* * *

Of all the places that he'd been since Satellite 5, the smallish department store several blocks away from the secret base that was also his home was the only place that Captain Jack Harkness didn't feel like the universe was moving and leaving him behind. He'd scanned it dozens of times in the years he'd lived near it, both before and after learning why he couldn't stay dead, and done every kind of test he could think of, but he'd found nothing to explain the weirdness- or rather, not weirdness. It was the one place he felt normal, so that and the fact that it reminded him a bit too much of the Boeshane Peninsula than anywhere in 19th, 20th, or 21st century Earth had a right to, yet there wasn't anything specific that he could identify as temporally misplaced, made him feel more at home, if he could justify to himself hanging out in a department store.

Jack had often wished that the store had been a pub or some such building, as that would have been much more up his alley, but beggars can't be choosers.

* * *

Department stores had long since ceased to hold any kind thrill for Rose, a combination of working in one and having experienced much more interesting ways of getting her shopping done, such as 8th century souks and open-air markets on planets with yellow skies. But as her mother had declared a family shopping day to get Tony ready for his first day of preschool, she found herself in one anyway. This shopping trip was hardly going to be dull, however, as Rose had noticed something odd as soon as she'd walked through the front door. It wasn't anything overt, only a feeling, so she kept quiet about it. And if aliens tried to invade in the middle of choosing which brand of crayons was the best, thus forestalling the shopping, who would be able to blame her?

"Why here, Jacks? There's loads of places in London closer to the house," said the only man besides her biological father she'd felt comfortable calling "Dad", and even with him, it had taken her a while to be comfortable with it.

"Nobody seems to be able to find me when I come in here. Not the press, not the paparazzi, nobody. And the whole world doesn't need to know what kind of socks Tony is going to be wearing to school," her mum replied. Jackie Tyler had taken to being the wife of one of the richest men in Great Britain like a fish to water, and that included dealing with the press. The slap that had once offended the high-and-mighty sensibilities of a nine hundred year old alien had been used several times against particularly obnoxious people, and had effectively scared off anyone who got too close. Of course, there was the occasional freelancer who thought that tales of the Tyler Slap were greatly exaggerated and managed to get a couple articles out before learning that the Slap was hereditary and that Rose was just as quick to protect her baby brother as their mother was.

So Rose was glad that she didn't have to deal with them, at least, or worry about accidentally starting weird diet crazes because she bought so much marmalade out of habit or because the Vindigs that had crashed in the Atlantic Ocean could only eat heavily processed food. Apparently the way to get the press from publishing all sorts of conspiracy stories was to give them something else to make up about you. She carried Tony and chatted with her parents and Mickey- who'd happened to come up the driveway as they were going down it, and decided his kitchen could do with restocking and joined them- while waiting for aliens to invade.


End file.
